


Drowning in a Teacup and Time

by Puzzlebox



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Hurt Merlin, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Merlin, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Isolation, Light Angst, Magic, Modern Era, Reincarnation, Slash if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 22:32:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15520074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puzzlebox/pseuds/Puzzlebox
Summary: Merlin wasn't expecting them. Not here, in his ragged flat in East London, and certainly not now, in the 21st century. But somehow they had met, and remembered, and reminisced and now it was Merlin's turn. He didn't know how to tell them, not over tea like it was a party anecdote instead of the worst parts of his life.Or in which Merlin is immortal and drowning and doesn't know how to tell the ones he loves most.





	Drowning in a Teacup and Time

“What about you Merlin, you look particularly young.” Gwaine, clad in T-shirt and jeans, was perched precariously on the arm of the couch, an impossible vision that made Merlin’s head swim.

 

“Well, he was like an infant the first time around.”

 

Merlin glared at Arthur, “I was not an infant.”

 

“Fussy, unhelpful. Cried a lot.”

 

Merlin glared harder, “I saved your backside more times than I care to remember”

 

“Fat lot of good that did” 

 

“Well I wasn't exactly counting on the reincarnation bit, were you?”

 

Arthur rolled his eyes, “God, don't use that word.”

 

“Well that’s what it is!”

 

“Yeah, but it's like so Buddhist-alternative lifestyle bullshit. Can't we use a different word?”

 

“Other life?” Gwen suggested.

 

Arthur groaned, “Somehow that's worse”

 

It was a little past midnight, and Merlin had just put the kettle on. All of the knights of the round table were crammed into the living room of his tiny flat, along with Gwen, and Arthur. Merlin tried as much as possible to look away, for fear of resembling a fish. He was just as he remembered him-- broad shoulders, golden hair, crooked teeth. He blessed the Gods for this version of Arthur not being introduced to braces. So far they had listened, enraptured, to the tale of Arthur’s-- or Jacob’s-- life in the 21st century, along with Gwen’s and Elyan’s-- who oddly enough, were not siblings this time around-- and Leon’s and Gwaine’s and Percival’s and Lancelot’s, and that only left-

 

“Merlin, you still haven't answered the question,” Arthur cut into his inner ramblings.

 

“Yeah, when were you born this time around?”

 

The tea kettle went off. Instead of using magic as he normally would, he stood up and ventured into the kitchen while thanking the universe for a conveniently timed escape. He poured the tea as slowly as he could manage into the eight mismatched mugs, the vision of peace and quiet concentration, but his mind was a buzzing saw. His thoughts moved back to when he was younger, desperately trying to figure a way out of this instead of accepting the inevitable. 

 

“Merlin let me help you with those” Gwen’s voice drifted into the kitchen. Instead, he floated the chipped ceramic vessels to each of his longtime friends, and smiled as they circumvented Gwen’s shocked face in the doorway.

 

“I didn't think you'd have it this time,” Gwen’s surprise melted into a smile.

 

“Merlin has magic?” Leon exclaimed.

 

“What do you mean this time? He had it last time?”  Percival looked equally confused.

 

“Relax, chaps. Everyone else knew,” Gwaine looked smug.

 

“Seriously? Were Percival, Leon and I the only ones out of the loop?” Elyan protested.

 

“I never told you, Gwaine,” Merlin interjected.

 

“Yeah, but you can't keep anything from me,” Gwaine shot back, a smirk quickly hidden by a mug as he sipped his tea. “Hey Merls, do you have anything stronger?”

 

Merlin rolled his eyes, “How you can be observant and drunk at the same time is beyond me”

 

“That's because if you so much as whiff wine you'll pass out, Merlin” Arthur pitched in.

 

“Come on, Merlin! You're the only one who hasn't told us your life story” Gwaine looked eager. 

 

Merlin looked down into his swirling hot tea, his eyes flickering gold as he cooled it down slightly. He breathed in. “I suppose you could say that I've had many lives- more like different versions, different names,”

 

“This isn't the first time you've been reincarnated?”

 

Merlin was notoriously bad at lying. In his time in Camelot, he tried his very hardest to circumvent the truth without blatantly fibbing his way out of any situation. But he'd gotten better over the years, and he could probably fool Gwen and Leon and Percival and maybe even pull the wool over Gwaine’s eyes. But Arthur would just see right through him. And he didn't want to lie to them, not these people, not to his family, not after so many years. He didn't want to have to hide again.

 

“Arthur, you remember-”

 

“Hey, quit changing the subject” Gwaine piped in, “it can't be that bad, Merls”.

 

“Yeah, I had to endure the jibes at being named Leopold for half an hour!” Elyan exclaimed. 

 

“And I had to tell everyone that I started remembering in the middle of losing my virginity,” Gwaine jabbed, “fair’s fair”.

 

“I'm not-” Merlin was struggling, “I'm trying to explain”.

 

Feeling the underlying tension in Merlin’s words, the masses quieted down instantly. Gone were the easy smiles and simple enjoyment of being together once again, replaced with pinched brows and uncomfortable silence. This wasn't what Merlin wanted.

 

“Arthur, do you remember Nimueh?”

 

“Who?”

 

“The young woman who lured you into a cave that one time”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“She was actually much older than your father”

 

“What? How?” Everyone waited with baited breath.

 

“Some sorcerers don't age the same as normal people,” Merlin said, measuring his words, “Sometimes it's slowed down a bit,”

 

“How old was Nimueh?”

 

“About 120, from what I can figure”

 

“Okay, so are you telling me that you're like a 40 year old man in a teenage body?” Arthur joked, but there was no smile from Merlin. Arthur tried again, “What are you saying?”

 

There was a brief pause, and Merlin’s shoulders lifted, as if passing on a burden.

 

“I was never reincarnated,”

 

“but then how-”

 

“Oh, Merlin”

 

“That's fucking epic”

 

“How old are you?”

 

“Best I can guess, my body stopped aging a couple years after I first came to Camelot. So, seventeen? Eighteen? I didn't catch on until a couple of decades had passed and I looked the same, so I'm not entirely certain.”

 

“And you've been alive since Camelot?”

 

“Lost count of the years after about 1,500.”

 

“But when you were in Camelot, after Arthur died, you got older,” Gwen interjected.

 

“Just a spell. I've used it loads since then, so I don't have to pack up and move every few years.”

 

“What have you been doing since then?”

 

“I don’t know, travelling the world, learning languages. I've been building a multimillion dollar empire up from the ground since a brief stint in America back in the late 19th century, so I'm decently well off”. 

 

“If you’re supposedly rich, why are we all packed in this prehistoric monstrosity you call a flat?”

 

“Nostalgia, I guess” Merlin shot back at Gwaine, “I once lived on this street in the 18th century.”

 

“What else have you done?” asked Leon with genuine curiosity.

 

Merlin went on, “Fought in the world wars, advised the great kings back in the 14th and 15th centuries. Fled the witch trials of Europe- nasty bit of history repeating itself- and-” Merlin paused for a moment, “really, there's far too much to explain. More than a lifetime’s worth, actually.”

 

“Those are the highlights?”

 

“Some of them”

 

“and the not highlights?” Arthur’s lips were pinched.

 

“I try not to think about them”

 

“Tell us anyway”

 

“Look- it was hard with all of you gone, and there wasn't a single person I've ever known who didn't die as well. I've known so many of the greatest people there have ever been. Hell, they've been some of my closest friends throughout my life and yet, for much of it, I was completely alone,” Merlin wished his voice wasn’t shaking.

 

“But you were alright?” Gwen reluctantly asked, “without us? You were okay on your own?”

 

“There were years where I felt high, almost. I just was drunk on life and humanity and-” Merlin cut off abruptly. He was trying to be honest here, though his eyes started burning in the midst of his somber confession, “and then there were years where it wasn't like that”.

 

He looked at Arthur, whose square jaw was clenched and eyebrows were pulled together like a taut bow. “I was depressed. Not all the time, but enough. Watching everyone I loved eventually die was too much. I lost it a few times”.

 

“Lost it? You don't mean…” Arthur was unwilling to voice that thought. Even imagining Merlin so sad and alone to even consider- it was too much to bear. Arthur awaited Merlin’s response and prayed for his gut to be wrong.

 

Merlin said nothing.

 

And as if on a roller coaster, Arthur's heart plummeted. He closed his eyes and turned slightly away. “How?” He gritted out, “when?”

 

“Arthur, I- that was a long time ago. A lifetime actually.” But Arthur didn't relax or call Merlin an idiot like old times, so Merlin tried again, “I spent a decade in the 15th century in bed. I didn't eat, didn't sleep. Didn't even move, actually. Didn't die either.”

 

“Not for lack of trying though?” Arthur spat out.

 

“No, not for lack of trying,” Merlin soberly replied, looking down into his tea as if to drown his shame.

 

“What else?”

 

“Nothing else important.”

 

“Just say it, goddammit.”

 

“What? That I once tried to shoot my brains out with a rifle? Or the time I tried to drown myself in the Thames, and washed up on an Argentinian beach twenty years later? Or maybe you'd like to know about the 70s when I once drank a gallon of bleach and all it did was keep me up all night and whiten my teeth?” Merlin snapped, and the window behind him featured a crash of thunder and lightning despite the clear skies not a moment earlier, his eyes burning like kindling. “You don't want to hear this stuff, Arthur. And I don't want to say it, so just stop asking!” He slammed his mug down onto the counter, and stood as if intending to flee.

 

“I need to know, Merlin.” Arthur rubbed his eyes viciously with the heels of his hands, “We all do”.

 

“Why, so you can blame yourself?” Merlin was quiet again, and you could hear the groans of the settling flat after Merlin’s mild magical outburst, “It's no one's fault and its ancient history.”

 

There was a tense pause, only interrupted by Merlin’s heaving breath. When Arthur spoke again, it was quiet, almost a whisper, more broken than the silence.

 

“What if something happens? What if we all leave you alone again?” 

 

Merlin looked unbothered, as if he’d considered it and already made his peace with the idea.

 

“I’ll survive, Arthur. I always do.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! Please comment below.


End file.
